ABOUT

​​Rachel Epperly is a composer-performer, improviser, and performance artist active in the US and South Korea. Stylistically, Rachel's music spans classical, electronic, ambient, and experimental pop. Her work incorporates several mediums such as solo opera, notated music, performance costume, improvisation, original text, and more. With a commitment to personal and emotional vulnerability, Rachel's work investigates and proposes alternatives to damaging cultural assumptions about the living world, gender/sexuality, and internalized capitalism.

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Recent projects include her original solo opera SPIDERLILY, which premiered in 2023; a suit of armor made from 20,000 recycled pop tabs; a performance art installation in which Rachel held five themed, staged poses for an hour at a time; and her upcoming narrative album about pumpjacks. While her primary focus as a musician is voice, she is also a classically-trained pianist and an accordionist. 

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Rachel is a recipient of a US Fulbright Research Grant in Composition, during which she studied pansori performance and composition in Seoul, South Korea. She now studies jeongga, and incorporates the technical foundations of jeonnga into her vocal and improvisation practice. She is the recipient of University of Michigan Sang Yong Nam Award for her commitment to Korean studies.

 

Rachel holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, and a BM in Music Composition from the University of Michigan with highest honors. Rachel has completed residencies with  Westben, Gabriela Lena Frank Academy of Music, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Art Omi:Music. She recently performed an excerpt of SPIDERLILY at National Sawdust through the Beth Morrison Project's NEXT GEN program.